Re: Win XP Home Clients On Win 2003 Server Domain

Partly: Windows XP Home computers can not become Windows Domain members - can't be "joined" to a domain. You need Windows XP Professional for this. Vista Home and Home Premium are the same, you need at least Vista Business.

However, users of Windows XP Home computers can access resources (e.g. shared folders and shared printers) that are hosted on domain member computers.

So, if you make the server a Domain Controller, you can:
1. join any Windows XP Professional as domain members
2. create domain user accounts for the users that use the Windows XP Home computers; those users will not be able to use the domain user accounts to logon to the XP Home computers - they will need local user accounts on those computers for that purpose
3. users that are logged on to the XP Home computers will be able to access shared folders on the (domain controller or domain member) server. There are several ways for the users to do so; a simple way is:

a. click Start, Run
b. \\servername\sharename
c. press Enter or click OK
d. when prompted, key the domain user account name (e.g. DomainName\DomainUserName) and the corresponding password
e. click OK

I suspect it will be better in the long run to replace XP Home with XP Professional - operation and support will be simplified and you/they will be able to take advantage of other domian features such as Group Policies to better manage the environment. With 8 clients, the Small Business Server offering may be useful, but if the client already has a 2003 server, the initial outlay for SBS may not be justifiable.

--
Bruce Sanderson
http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders

It is perfectly useless to know the right answer to the wrong question.



"Dell Boy" <Dell Boy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:89087065-1370-4D63-AAED-CD9DEDF03FCD@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I've lots of desktop experience as an IT Technician in peer-to-peer and home
user environments but I'm a bit of a newby to servers having only worked on a
Win 2K domain server with a handful ofclients several years ago and I've no
Win 2003 Server experience at all.

A small business has contacted me, they have a Win 2003 Server which they
use basically as a desktop PC with a shared folder, and eight client PCs most
of which are Windows XP Home. I want to set the server up so that it
authenticates users logging on to the network because they want employees to
be able to log on remotely. I believe that Windows XP Home PCs can't be
joined to a domain and therfore will not be able to access the shared folder
after I do this, am I correct?

.

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